Revenge of the Wrought Iron Flamingos Book Review Summary

Meg Langslow is back at her hometown of Yorktown, Virginia to celebrate the Battle of Yorktown crafts fair when she is caught up in the middle of a murder investigation. There is so much happening with the craft fair when friends and family make this simple event into a huge headache with it being a reenactment of the battle of Yorktown from the American Revolutionary War. Her boyfriend Michael and his mother Mrs. Waterston with Meg have become the center of organizing it and policing it for authentic items only to be used at the craft fair. There are several craftsmen from glassmakers, pottery, blacksmiths as well as her family and friends helping to make the first day run smoothly. Her brother Rob is meeting Roger Benson to sell his video game to Benson's company. There is her distant cousin Wesley Hatcher, who is a reporter for a scuzzy magazine, is there hassling her about a story to write about. Thaddeus Jackson or Tad is a computer programmer that came to the craft fair to give her a copy of Craftwork software, but he gets into a fight with Mr. Benson about stealing his software. Faulk Cates, who is Tad's boyfriend and longtime blacksmithing mentor to Meg, is seen fighting with Mr. Benson at the craft fair as well.

Later, that night there is a party at the Moore house of which more fighting occurs with Mr. Benson over the software. Meg decides to leave the party to check on her booth, but on her way she finds Wesley screaming for help after he is found locked up by Tony Grimes the other blacksmith. Wesley was seen fighting with Tony over writing article about his poorly made work he copied from Meg at the party. Tony was then seen passed out from being too drunk. Meg finds at her booth the dead body of Mr. Benson, a missing cash box, and her computer was tampered with along with her booth being trashed. The police are called to investigate the murder with Deputy Montgomery or Monty in charge and Meg's cousin Horace Hollington to bag evidence.

Later that night, Meg and Michael learn that one of the battle man was watching every move of Mrs. Waterston. Meg and Michael are now talking to some of the other craftsmen about the night of the murder. They found out that Mr. Benson was not killed by the dagger that Meg crafted but another weapon and that Mr. Benson was responsible for a company going out of business causing many stockholders to lose money and their jobs. Mrs. Fenniman was overheard saying that Mr. Benson was a thief and suggested he be killed. Deputy Monty is now questioning everyone about the murder to find out that some people did not have alibis and checking out motive was for killing Mr. Benson.

Meanwhile, Wesley is worried that someone was after him instead of Mr. Benson because they were both wearing the same costume and that Wesley had information on many people at the fair, which anyone could have wanted him dead. Meg then learns from Wesley that Monty was not a big city detective and could potentially be a person of interest because he came to the murder scene very fast. Much later, Meg is now able get access to her booth after the investigators were done with it. Meg and Michael find out that Mrs. Waterston had taken her cash box to teach her a lesson about being careless about her things, which now makes her a possible suspect because she was there around the time of the murder, but she was being following by one of the battle men actors so she could not be the murderer. Deputy Monty is told about Mrs. Waterston taking Meg's cash box and now Meg lets him know she knows about having wrong murderer weapon. Meg guessed that they had the wrong weapon when the police was checking all the weapons, but got confirmation from her cousin Horace.

Meg then gets back to her booth to sell more pieces because everyone wanted something from the crime scene. Then, Mrs. Fenniman decides she wants her wrought iron flamingos of which Meg was hiding to avoid being ticketed for having non period items from the battle of Yorktown. When she grabs them, she finds that there are 13 instead of 12 and sees that the 13th one was not one of hers but one of Tony's copied design with blood on it. The flaming is now confirmed as the murder weapon and that Tony had been at her booth that night. He had broken her locked storage to find out how she made the flamingos. Once he there, he witnessed two men arguing and one of them had red plaid sock with a buckle, which they identified the person to be Faulk at the booth. Faulk was there but he said he was only there trying to get info on Tony's plagiarizing Meg's work. Deputy Monty arrested him after he told Faulk that Tad had an alibi because he was with another man. This left Meg upset because she was sure someone else was the murderer or maybe Benson was not the intended target.

Meg decided to continue to investigate alone before she talked to Tony and found out he did not know about the key to the padlocks that were used on Wesley. The only person who knew was Wesley, so Meg left to go to Wesley's tent not before she found out that Tony was color blind with red and green. With this information, she knew that Faulk did not do it because Tony didn't know the true color of the socks and had also messed up the color of the flamingos too. Meg decided to see if Wesley had plaid socks in the tent. She found a folder of clips from stories of the falling companies and a witness that caused it, which caused the newspaper that Wesley worked at to close down. Meg then found the plaid socks from a bag from McDonalds along with gun power and ammunition. She saw how Wesley was looking at Michael in the rehearsal for the battle reenactment; it was an angry look, which Meg knew the next murder victim would be Michael.

So, Meg had the sheriff and Deputy Monty notified with the evidence and then forced Horace to give up his costume to go find Wesley before he kills Michael. Meg is running on the battle field along with Cousin Horace and Spike the dog to find Wesley and then she tackles him before he could shoot Michael, but Wesley's shot hit another person. Finally, Wesley is arrested and taken away. Meg and Michael leave and continue to finish talking about their future living closer.
Best part of story, including ending:
I liked how there was a lot of details and description of how the main character feels through out the whole book.

Best scene in story:
My favorite scene was when Meg figures out who the murderer is and is rushing to get on the battle field. She takes her cousin Horace's costume with force and makes her way on the battle field. Meg then is being chased by cousin Horace and Spike the dog through the battlefield. Her dad James is filming it and Mrs. Waterston is yelling at them to get off the field. There is a lot of confusion but its a funny scene.

Opinion about the main character:
I like how Meg is assertive and just goes in finds the clues along with being active in hunting down the murderer. She is tough person not afraid to get her hands dirty to find her killer.

The review of this Book prepared by Millicent Schrocka Level 2 American Robin scholar

Meg Langslow, ornamental blacksmith and her boyfriend, Michael, along with their extended eccentric families are participating in a colonial era craft fair and re-enactment of the Battle of Yorktown. Meg hopes that her booth will be a huge success selling bayonets, buckles and pothooks. She also is delivering a set of modern ornamental lawn flamingos to a client at the fair. When a businessman who is embroiled in a dispute with Meg's brother is murdered with one of those same flamingos, Meg becomes the obvious suspect. Very humorous and light-hearted mystery.

The review of this Book prepared by Linda Sourpuss

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